On 9 Jun 2007, at 20:12, Chris Chiasson wrote:
> On 6/9/07, Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz at mimuw.edu.pl> wrote:
>> *This message was transferred with a trial version of CommuniGate
>> (tm) Pro*
>> The idea that people always run the best software they could seems
>> rather doubtful to me, but is completely irrelevant. I think you
>> completely missed the point of the article, which does not claim the
>> older software was better, but only that a lot of new software
>> (certainly not all) is "bloated" - a completely different thing. Did
>> you really think that the reason I posted this link was because I
>> would rather use Mathematica 1 than Mathematica 6?
>
> Andrzej Kozlowski,
>
> I read the article when it was linked from (I think) Slashdot a while
> ago, so I have had time to think about it and form an opinion.
> Basically, I do believe that software bloat does exist. However, many
> features, while they may be computationally inefficient, are actually
> quite convenient and useful. How many times have you lost something
> beyond the first undo level in Mathematica? Wouldn't multiple undo
> levels have been useful? I understand that the feature will decrease
> performance (even further, heh), but I do not think the optimum
> balance of features vs. performance has been attained here.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> --
> http://chris.chiasson.name/
There are a few features that are useful to everyone, and there are
many that are useful only to some but (unless they are made somehow
optional), will slow down everyone, forcing people either to get new
hardware or give up other features that they really need by having to
stick with older versions.
I agree that a multiple undo would occasionally be useful, but I
certainly would not pay the price of having my computer paralyzed for
a few minutes every time time I save. Besides, I can think of many
other features, more directly relevant to the main purpose of
Mathematica, that I would rather have than this one. Of course a
simple kind of multiple undo, one that only undoes typing and not
evaluation, might not present any problems, though it would hardly be
worth making so much fuss about. Anything that would bring my
computer to a halt is unacceptable to me, however nice it might be
for people who alsways have the latest hardware. All I wanted to
point out is that there is also this aspect to features like this one
and I hope that WRI does not forget about it when designing new
versions.
Andrzej Kozlowski